"Chooook Narrriiizzzz!"

It is interesting to me how much American culture has made its way to Spain. So much! Movies, fast food chains, music, clothing (I saw a Spaniard wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat today...I guarantee you he has no idea where Cincinnati is or what the Reds are), etc. It is even more interesting to me what reaches Maria, my seventy year old host mom. The answer to that is: not much. She loves old American movies (and George Clooney), but that's about as far "American" as she goes.

Tonight at dinner, we were watching TV (like we always do) and there was some little news segment about Karate. My roommate, Katie, tried to tell Maria that she knows some Karate. Well, Katie didn't really know how to say that in Spanish and begins to preform some Karate kicks. All of a sudden, Maria starts yelling "CHOOOOOOOOK-NARRRIIIZZZZZ! CHOOOOOOOK-NARRIZZZZZ!" and waving her arms in the air. I have no idea what is going on. In Spanish, nariz means "nose," so I thought she was trying to tell us something about her nose. After a bit of thinking, I realized that "Chook-Nariz" sounds a whole lot like "Chuck Norris." I said, "Chuck Norris?" to Maria and she got all excited and said "SI! SI! SI! Me gusta mucho!" So...my host mom likes Chuck Norris..alright...

Whenever Maria talks about an Asian person or anything related to Asia, or there is an Asian person on TV, she feels the need to pull the sides of her eyes back to make the "squinty eye" look. Not very politically correct, but slightly hysterical. So, of course after mentioned Chook-Nariz, I asked her if she liked Jackie Chan. She said he was very "fun" and then proceeded to pull back her eyes. Anyways, when the subject of George Clooney came up and she exclaimed "QUE GUAPO" (meaning: how handsome!), we started asking her what other actors she liked. Well, an actor she did not like was Richard Gere. We asked her why and she pulled back her eyes in her "Asian fashion." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Richard Gere is not Asian......

Maria is quite the character.

Today was awesome. After class and a siesta, I went sailing with 80 other students from IES on the Mediterranean...not too shabby at all...